Abstract:
This paper investigates the relationship between the two parameters, aquifer media and hydraulic conductiv-ity, and assesses their reliability for aquifer vulnerability assessment. To evaluate the possible non-inde-pendence of the parameters in question, sensitivity analysis procedure was used in a GIS environment. The procedure was tested in three areas where aquifer vulnerability was assessed, corresponding to three different hydrogeological settings. The applications demonstrate that non-independence is confirmed and is more evident in alluvial and volcano-pyroclastic aquifers.

Abstract:
New Information Systems Development Methodologies (ISDMs) are suggested in the belief that their deployment would be beneficial to consultants in their work. A large number of ISDMs already exist but their value has been questioned and at the same time new methodologies continue to be introduced in an attempt to support and improve the practice of information systems development work. What is not always clear from current studies is that ISDM is a multi-perspective and cross-discipline phenomenon. Although a large amount of knowledge of ISDM is available, different disciplinary interests have resulted in fragmented assessments of it. This paper intends to identify theoretical perspectives applied in the conceptualization of ISDM. A review of the literature on ISDM was conducted and four different theoretical perspectives were identified: 1) system, 2) structure, 3) innovation, and 4) knowledge. While each perspective provides various overarching depictions of ISDM, the synthesized view of ISDM provided in this study reveals the complexities and ambiguities of a multifaceted phenomenon such as ISDM. Suggestions for an alternative conceptualization of ISDM are provided in an attempt to facilitate the investigation of ISDM.

Abstract:
We present the case of a 4 year old girl whose adenoidectomy had to be performed via an endoscopictrans oral approach due to the unexpected inability to fully open the mouth during the procedure. The patient had previously been taking Risperidone for behavioral symptoms associated with her autism. The jaw tone returned to normal following the procedure and there were no complications. An interaction between the Risperidone and the anesthetics were the likely cause of the trismus.

Abstract:
Because of the evolution of markets and technologies, prototyping concerns should be kept updated almost day by day. Moreover, user centered design moves the focus towards interaction issues. Prototyping activities matching such characteristics are already available, but they are not so diffused in the industrial domain. This is due to many reasons; an important one is that a rigorous classification of them is missing, as well as an effective helping tool for the selection of the best activities, given the design context. The research described in this paper aims at defining a new classification of prototyping activities, as well as at developing a selection algorithm to choose the best ones in an automatic way. These goals are pursued by defining a set of characteristics that allow describing accurately the prototyping activities. The resulting classification is made by five classes, based on eighteen characteristics. This classification is exploited by the first release of an algorithm for the selection of the best activities, chosen in order to satisfy design situations described thanks to a different set of eleven indices. Five experiences in the field have been used up to now as a starting point for validating the research outcomes.

Overweight and obesity (O&O) are a global public health problem, which many scientists have named as the XXI century epidemic. Since the 80’s decade, the O&O world prevalence has increased both in children and adults, and Mexico is among the highest. Under this context, the main goal of this research is to develop a business model based on a service of nutritional education as a way to fight against O&O. This research proposes a new model founded on a strategic combination of Service Design and Competitive Intelligence methodologies. The aim is to generate a unique and innovative service tailored to customer needs.

The relationship with patients/users is a
crucial dimension for helping professionals. It is nevertheless mostly analyzed
in its negative connotation, that’s to say as a possible cause, for example, of
the burnout syndrome, while very few are research works that take into account
the positive side of the relationship, as a resource more than a problem, and
even fewer are the instruments to measure it. The aim of the present work is
the development and the analysis of the characteristics of a scale to measure
the gratitude expressed by patients perceived by operators and of a scale to
measure the perception of support that gratitude by patients/customers offers
to relieve the fatigue of daily commitment and return significance to their
work. The two scales were developed and then integrated into a questionnaire
including items regarding the negative side of the relationship (exceeding requests
from patients) and the Customer-initiated support scale (Zimmermann
et al., 2011). The questionnaire was filled in by 267 nurses in Piedmont,
Italy. Descriptive analyses on each item, exploratory factor analysis,
Cronbach’s alpha, analysis of variance, and bivariate correlations were
conducted. Both scales show a one-factor solution. The independent sample
t-tests highlighted differences between men and women and between people who
have families to care for and people who do not. Bivariate correlations
signalled a positive relationship between both the gratitude scales and the
Customer-initiated support; no relationships are evident with the scale of
exceeding request from patients. A limitation of the work is the dimension of
the sample: a more extensive administration of the questionnaire is currently
in progress that will also permit to more deeply investigate the factorial
structure of the scales. The scales will allow filling a gap in measuring a
central work issue for helping professions.

In this work we present a new simple index to estimate water stress
(WS) for different types of surfaces, from remotely sensed data. We
derive a WS index, named WSIEw,
modifying the Water Deficit Index (WDI) proposed by Moran et al. by using the wet environment evapotranspiration (Ew) instead of the potential
evapotranspiration (Epot)
concept. Jiang and Islam model was used to simulate actual evapotranspiration
(ET) and Priestley and Taylor equation to estimate Ew. The WSIEw results were compared to ground observations of ET, precipitation (PP), soil temperature (Tsoil) and soil moisture (SM)
in the Southern Great Plains-EEUU. Preliminary
results suggest the method is sensitive to the water status of different
surfaces. However, the WSIEw would range from 0 to 0.7, having
a value of 0.4 for a dry surface with 5% of SM. The
methodology is operationally

Abstract:
Analysis of legal documents cannot be reduced to their linguistic expression. When dealing whit legal texts a distinction should be made between the linguistic form (normative statement) and the content (norm). Norms are conceived as the interpreted meaning of linguistic contexts (partitions in a legal text, fragments of judicial decisions, etc). In the interpretative process, legal practitioners make reference to an external system of concepts that can be assumed, even if not universal, at least shared by a large social and cultural community. As a consequence, legal interpretation and legal conceptualization are strongly influenced by cultural, social and political factors and changes in meaning of legal concepts occur within a synchronic localization in different cultures and within a diachronic evolution process of the environment in which they are created. This dynamic nature of legal knowledge poses serious problems in communicating legal information, and even more in the realm of digital communication, where, in order to manage knowledge across national borders, there is a strong demand of shared vocabularies embedding a shared understanding of legal concept. This paper aims at showing how lexical/terminological resources and conceptual structures, such as ontologies, can be constructed by means of the innovative tools provided by ICT, like the Semantic Web languages, the computational linguistic and the ontology engineering techniques. Such semantic resources may have a strategic role in representing meaning evolution and in investigating social and cultural influences in linguistic uses and, as a further goal, solutions offered by ICT for bridging the gap between form and content can also provide innovative visions of theoretical issues.

The aim
of the present study is to investigate the applicability of two models of the
influence of coping on personality and behavioral problems (the additive and
mediational one). This study investigate comparatively the
explanation models of coping and health in adolescents using the theoretical
and methological studies of Baron and Kenny (1986), Rudolph, Denning and Weisz
(1995) and Gomez (1998) of influential
models. Participants were 558 adolescents (44.3% boys and 55.7% girls) aged
between 11 to 18 years old (M = 13.92, SD = 1.45), from Barcelona (Spain). Data show significant
correlation between avoidance coping, anxiety trait and behavioral problems and
support partial mediation on their relationship. No mediation was found for
approach coping, extraversion and behavioral problems so only the additive
model was supported. In conclusion, this study indicates that: the explaining
model of personality, coping and behavioral problems can vary depending on the
coping strategies involved in the equation; avoidance coping can be described
as the way anxiety trait influences behavioral problems; personality can be
describe as a coping resource; and avoidance coping increases the influence of
personality on behavioral problems by two ways: one, by the cumulative effect;
and two, by the mediational influence that it exerts on the relationship of
anxiety trait and behavioral problems.

Abstract:
The new online, Open Access journal Atmosphere has been launched to present reviews, regular research papers, communications and short notes on atmospheric topics. These topics include experimental and theoretical work related to the physical atmosphere, such as turbulence, atmospheric flow, dynamic and physical processes and mechanisms, atmospheric chemistry, such as changes in atmospheric composition, including aerosols, ozone, air pollution, chemical weather, meteorology and scale interaction, climate, climate change and environmental science, including water and energy cycles.